I was watching a youtube video of a trial in the US: a young man who killed his father because he’d been raping him ever since he was 6. He got sentenced to life in prison because either the jury didn’t believe him or they didn’t believe he’d acted in self defence, whatever. I watched him cry as he was being questioned by the lawyers about what he’d endured and I genuinely felt bad for him. I believed him and was moved by his pain. I checked the comments and everybody was being supportive and saying he should be freed, but there were also dozens of comments with thousands of upvotes saying: “if he’d been a girl he would be free right now”, “people never believe men”, “this is why men don’t come forward” and “if he was a girl it would be a whole different story.” Men and women, repeating the same thing over and over again, like some rehearsed performance: women are believed more than men and they get a free pass for murder. Basically, that the justice system favours women and hastily punishes those accused of rape. Which is a blatant lie. So why do people believe it? Why do they feel the need to say it every time a man is abused? My empathy for the guy slowly vanished as I remembered that a man would never feel the same way about a woman and that men literally use other men’s pain to oppress women further. There’s an underlying message with it too: that men rape women so frequently that everyone believes it, which is a privilege. Female privilege. Women and girls are privileged for being assaulted so frequently that it can’t be denied. And yet it is.
I looked at the corner of my youtube screen and saw the next recommended video: “Camille Vasquez’s Cross of Amber Heard.” In the video, Amber Heard cries much like the man I was watching just before, about being raped. The top comments all call her a liar, an evil psychopath, a bad actress and a woman who tried to ruin a man’s life with false rape accusations. They’re all laughing at her. You really can’t make this shit up.
This isn’t my usual post, but men being so intimidated by women with large dogs that they have to point out ways they can overpower the dog drives me nuts.
I’m a woman, living in a city, and I have a VERY large Shepherd mix I got from the shelter (his name is, in fact, Arthur Morgan, but I digress). He’s got some reactivity we’re working on (not aggression; he just wants to say hi to everyone and gets REALLY frustrated when he can’t. We’re working on it). So we go out early to get his exercise in, training, a hike, a hike, and fetch on a longline.
Today was a hike, and the ladies or AFAB people that have large dogs know it makes you feel so much better doing things alone, hiking, running at night, everything, even if your dog is a huge wuss. So we’re on our hike, having a great time, and we stop at a summit to look at the views and all that, and a man starts commenting on my dog. That’s fine; he’s pretty, he’s big, he looks like what people think wolves look like, so I always get comments on him. He asks me why I wanted a big dog, and I said I grew up with them and loved them and feel safer with one around, and this man goes, “Well, you know he’s not bullet proof right?” Then proceeds to also say, “He’s also not immune to, like, a knife.”
Why that man felt the need to invalidate my very real sense of security with my large dog to feel more in control of the situation, and what made it worse was my dog wasn’t reacting, wasn’t barking, was just staring at him, staring like something was wrong. So safe to say the morning hike ended early, and I came back just fuming at how ridiculous men get when they lose even a sliver of power over women. I know I’m not the only woman with a large dog to hear those kinds of comments, but male fragility never ceases to amaze me.
Men so villanous they are like, you know I could kill your dog, right? And think that is a very normal response.
Men are also not immune to knives. Btw.
Hazel McNab, Last Light, linocut.
"a man could never get away with this" I have never seen a man not get away with something in my life
Anonymous
sent a message
Silly girl, you really think you know who sends you things? Think again. Or maybe you can't, since you seem to be so poisoned in your mind that it's impaired your reasoning. I am actually a very happy and proud woman, I just hate creatures like you. Because you are nothing like me, you are wallowing in envy for people like myself, so much so that it's turned you from a person into a void of a thing. Fix yourself or disappear forever.
Yes, you definitely seem like a very happy woman with a very interesting life and hobbies. Which is why you’re here sending bizarre walls of text to a stranger online instead of doing… literally anything else.
Anonymous
sent a message
(updated) What is your opinion on the small demographic of women who essentially look like models (tall, conventionally attractive), their daily struggles, their everyday lives, resentment, and even being held back in life?
Not to be annoying but think I fit this category, but it’s so rare to meet other people who fit this description and honestly myself and probably most others in the community have had a more outrageous and grossly difficult life with major setbacks and systematic abuse, especially if they belong to more than one marginalised community. I’d love to hear your opinion on this because it’s generally a topic that is laughed out of most public discourse
I think your experience is identical to that of any other woman except that you’re more likely to get hired for a job. Why would life be more difficult and painful for a beautiful woman than for a supposedly unattractive one? You’re gonna have to be more precise. The only thing I can think of is being told that you achieved certain things only because of your looks. Can you give me examples of how your life is harder than mine because you look good? It’s not a competition I’m just trying to understand.
Anonymous
sent a message
I wish you'd already find some friends or something worth living for instead of rotting online and spreading your putrid disease everywhere. You are a sickening thing, and it's truly obvious that you don't have anything worth living for, so you try to poison others with you. Pathetic. Fix yourself or disappear forever.
Ma’am, you’ve made a whole website at age 25 about your pronouns and your kinship with bi-gender wolves and now you’re sending me anonymous messages to abuse me, who’s rotting online?
Do they only agree to make movies about real women who weren’t conventionally attractive if they can lie about it? How can women and girls identify with female historical figures when they never look “real?”
